The Singles Bar: The Little Miss maps out spooky funeral march with ‘Take Me, Too’
The LA folk singer confesses her depressed state with a new single.
Welcome to The Singles Bar, a review series focused on new single and song releases.
In her book #GIRLBOSS, vintage fashion visionary Sophia Amoruso details the cold, hard truths of life and the pursuit of creative freedom. From a thrift-store rabble-rouser who shoplifts to a steel-jawed adult taking over the world, she manages to pack witty punches left and right. Her relentless charm is the vehicle through which she exposes her own weather-beaten course, weaving in and out of uncertainty and self-doubts. Amoruso draws upon her intrinsic fearlessness (and years of nomadic sensibility) to learn how to bottle that spirit and squash any qualms. As The Beatles once sang, it’s a long and winding road, indeed.
The destination is always worth it, but the journey is equally as vital. That’s never been more true than it is for folk-pop singer-songwriter The Little Miss (real name Hayley Johnson), who certainly has a story she can impart about darkness, depression and mounting afflictions that play more as an end-of-time prophesy than a nearly baptismal act of renewal. “Take Me, Too,” from her latest EP, American Dream, swells in ghoulish whispers as a funeral march, putting the final nail in the literal and metaphorical coffin and letting one’s spirit evaporate into the sunset. The cathedral-sized organ moans and weeps behind her, and Johnson’s voice is both angelic and laced with fire-cooked vulnerability. “They say, ‘Life, it is a journey’ / If it is, I’m tired of traveling,” she sings, her lips quivering and sliding through the notes, as she tries to hold back tears welling up in her eyes. “I know the road goes on somehow…”
It’s a stern but majestic performance, and by song’s end, you don’t really know if she finally gave in or mustered up the strength to conquer her demons. “I can’t run, no / I can’t hide from this, from this,” she maintains, leaving the listener both sobered and unnerved. The organ hums on for a few more seconds and abruptly ends in stunning force. “Take Me, Too” rises up from early, transplanted roots in Los Angeles, as a promising young talent faced with countless closing doors and windows painted shut. “The weight of my pursuit was crushing. I knew two people; I couldn’t find a steady job; and I didn’t know where to begin,” she says of her story, which brings the song into clearer, more sobering view. “More than anything, I wanted to jump ahead to the place in my story that said, ‘And she lived happily ever after.’ I didn’t want to do the leg work, stumble through awkward open mic nights or do anything that challenged me or my sense of self.”
Thankfully, however, she dug her feet further into the cement, did her time, paid her dues and now flies freer than she could have anticipated. Johnson’s American Dream EP wistfully mingles so-Cal folk music of the 1970s with dusty alt-rock and singer-songwriter classicisms. Even through vast stylistic shakes and rattles, her warbling tenor remains potent and impressively spellbinding.
Listen below:
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